Establishing a Pluralist Society in Medieval Korea, 918-1170: History, Ideology and Identity in the Koryŏ Dynasty

This book offers no less than a radically different view of the Kory state. Until now scholarship failed to recognize the complicated historical descent, byzantine international relations and multiple incommensurable worldviews of the early Korean Kory state (918-1170). Instead, it subjected these to reductionist categories favouring reified particulars over broader views. Asking how Kory meaningfully dealt with its environment, Remco Breuker rejects the reduction of Kory intellectual abundance to analytical categories, and emphasizes the functional importance of Kory s pluralism in allowing the notion that realities were scattered, inconsistent and plural. Here is a convincing argument that Kory s pluralism decisively contributed to the formation of a region-transcending communal identity that enabled Kory to engage in a civilizational competition with neighbouring Chinese and Manchurian states, while maintaining a dynamic but stable society domestically.

حول المؤلف (2010)

Remco E. Breuker, Ph.D. (2006) in Korean History, Leiden University, works on medieval Korean and Northeast Asian history and historiography. He has published extensively on Kory history including "Forging the Truth: Creative Deception and National Identity in Medieval Korea" (2009).